Quantity over Quality, Part Two
Four more pitchers who worked even harder for equally undesirable results.
In our last post, we discussed four of the eight pitchers who exceeded 110 pitches in an appearance in 2023 without recording a quality start. You may or may not have noticed that the four pitchers we discussed all threw precisely 112 pitches in their outings. Surprise! This list of names isn’t ordered randomly; we’ve ranked pitchers by number of pitches thrown, in ascending order. We have four more players to discuss today, the first of whom threw 112 pitches and the rest of whom went even further.
Jordan Lyles facing the Chicago White Sox on May 9, 2023:
Jordan Lyles may not seem like the most exciting pitcher in the sport. In some ways, he’s a prototypical journeyman who’s been fortunate enough to garner twelve years of MLB experience across eight different teams. A closer look reveals that “prototypical journeyman” may be overselling Lyles, who has been a below-average pitcher at every stage of his MLB career with the exception of two separate half-seasons in Milwaukee. But if the close look lasts for long enough, there starts to be a unique beauty in what Lyles has accomplished.
After spending the start of his career from 2011-2017 as a back-of-rotation starter on moribund Houston and Colorado teams, then experimenting with the bullpen at the end of the decade, Lyles embraced his identity as The Last Innings Eater in the 2020s. In a sport that has shifted towards electric arms that throw 102 mph until their elbows explode after 3 innings, Lyles has zagged into an identity as a consistently ineffective member of a starting rotation. For a team that doesn’t expect to be very good, like the 2021 Rangers, 2022 Orioles, or 2023 Royals, Jordan Lyles will take the baseball every fifth day and throw his 91 mph fastball with a permissible degree of confidence. Sure, a few runs are going to score. You might not win. But after you lose, Jordan Lyles will show up five days later and lead you once more into the middle stages of your increasingly meaningless ballgames. According to Baseball Reference, Lyles has been worth 2.6 wins below replacement level in his career. Among active pitchers, he is 17th in innings pitched and 21st in games started, as well as 5th in losses and 4th in earned runs allowed. He has made about $50 million in salary.
Jordan Lyles deserved to be in this post based on lifetime achievement, and fortunately he qualified on merit in his second start of May. His first start of May came close, as he threw 102 pitches across five innings, but he was only permitted to give up eight runs before getting relieved. Lyles was determined to make it further today and started off on a bang with three perfect innings that required just 35 pitches. His style was crimped in the fourth inning when Luis Robert Jr. snuck in a solo home run, but Lyles made it through five innings on just 63 pitches. The sixth was rockier, as a first-pitch double by Lenyn Sosa was followed by a second-pitch groundout from Andrew Benintendi and then a fourth-pitch home run to Andrew Vaughn. Lyles got the final two outs shortly thereafter and made it through six innings with three runs allowed and 73 pitches thrown.
There’s a fork in the road here — 73 pitches isn’t a ton, but Lyles seemed to be losing effectiveness as he faced the White Sox hitters for a third time. And while 73 pitches isn’t a ton, six innings is plenty for a starting pitcher in 2023. Lyles was opposite Lucas Giolito, who required 63 pitches to get through five innings, 30 more for a rocky sixth inning, and then turned things over to Joe Kelly, Reynaldo Lopez, and Kendall Graveman with a 3-2 lead. Those three pitchers each took an inning of work and were perfect, requiring 30 pitches in total to shut down any threat from the Royals. That’s basically an organization’s ideal performance from its pitching staff – six solid innings from the starter and three great innings from the bullpen.
That’s certainly not Jordan Lyles’ concept of “ideal performance.” If he quit at 73 pitches it would’ve ended up as his second-lowest pitch total of 2023. Sure, he’d earn the “quality start” with just three runs in his six innings, but Jordan Lyles lives for the “quantity start.” Save the quality for some replacement-level player. Lyles went back out for the seventh and only required nine pitches to lose his ephemeral quality start, as Seby Zavala drove in Hanser Alberto after the latter hit a first-pitch double. But that was the last hit Lyles allowed; he got the next seven batters out to complete a nine-inning, 112-pitch performance. The Royals failed to score any runs, giving Lyles the rare complete game loss as he fell to 0-6 on the season.
I’m not sure if “rare” is really the correct word. Since Lyles entered MLB in 2011, this was one of two starts where a pitcher threw 9.0 innings, allowed at least four runs, and took the loss. But if we expand to the 8.0 inning complete game, it becomes a bit less rare. In fact, Lyles threw two of those in 2023, leading the AL in complete games with 3 (he is alone in first and only four pitchers reached 2 complete games). Lyles allowed four runs in all three of his complete games and took the loss in each one. Lyles’ three complete game losses in 2023 matched the rest of baseball’s total, and the other three lost 1-0, 1-0, and 2-1 (I’m ignoring David Peterson’s 5-inning performance in a game called due to rain here, but acknowledging it parenthetically).
FINAL LINE (for Jordan Lyles): 9.0 IP, 6 hits, 4 runs (4 earned), 0 walks, 6 strikeouts. 112 pitches, 78 strikes. Complete game, loss.
Chris Bassitt facing the Baltimore Orioles on July 31, 2023:
Chris Bassitt is the best pitcher who gets to join our club, having finished 10th in AL Cy Young voting last year. As befits a pitcher that we’re discussing in today’s context, Bassitt’s case for award consideration would be based more on consistent body of work than pure dominance. He led the American League in three statistical categories in 2023: wins, games started, and batters faced. He was second in quality starts, with 21 of his 33 starts meeting the threshold. Of the 12 that didn’t make it, seven went at least 5.0 innings, giving Bassitt the almost-extinct title of 200 Inning Pitcher in 2023.
The point of all these numbers is that we’re talking about a guy who should be called a workhorse by current standards. Bassitt is making $22 million this season and that’s largely premised on his ability to consistently pitch deep into games. But even for a 200 Inning Pitcher, Bassitt’s pitch counts remained reasonable as he tended to get his work done quickly. He threw fewer than 100 pitches in 20 of his 33 starts and only exceeded 110 pitches on one occasion.
Like in several of our examples from last time, Bassitt’s opportunity for an individual marathon was occasioned by the broader marathon that the Toronto Blue Jays were running. An off day on July 27 broke a streak of 9 consecutive game days and was followed by a brutal streak of 17 more game days. This was the fourth of those seventeen and the first three-game series against the Angels sapped way more energy from the bullpen than you would expect under the circumstances. The Blue Jays allowed just one run in each of the first two games, but that required 63 pitches from the bullpen in game one and 72 pitches from the bullpen in game two. The standard slipped somewhat in game three as Yimi Garcia, pitching in a third consecutive game, allowed a second Angels run to score to lose the game 2-1. The Blue Jays needed a starting pitcher to give their bullpen a rest and they couldn’t ask for a better guy to do it than Chris Bassitt.
When Bassitt utilized eleven pitches to get the first two batters of the game to strike out, it was hard to complain too much about the lurking inefficiency. When he walked Anthony Santander on six pitches, brows in Toronto began to furrow. When Ryan O’Hearn concluded an 8-pitch at bat by knocking a single to send Santander to third base, it was officially concerning. And when Ryan Mountcastle hit the 30th pitch of the ballgame for a two-out, two-RBI double, it crossed from concerning to bad. Bassitt walked Adam Frazier on four pitches to toy with total calamity before getting Austin Hays to line out and end the first inning after 37 pitches.
Bassitt needed sixteen pitches in the second inning to retire three batters, only securing the second out because Jorge Mateo got greedy after successfully stealing second base and was thrown out going for third. His 58th pitch was hit over the fence by Gunnar Henderson to kick off the third inning and his 62nd pitch was doubled down the line by Anthony Santander. But that was probably Bassitt’s low point – from there, he pitched like a man whose workday had been sapped away by unexpected meetings but who still wanted to get out of the office before traffic picked up. Santander scored the Orioles’ fourth run on two consecutive sacrifice flies, but it only took Bassitt four pitches to get those two outs. Six pitches later, the inning was over and Bassitt was through 3.0 innings on 72 pitches.
Bassitt faced ten more batters in the game, got nine more outs, and threw just 41 more pitches. He allowed one harmless single and never spent more than six pitches dispatching a hitter (both of those six pitch ABs ended in strikeouts). His 113th pitch struck out Colton Cowser to bring the 6th inning to a close and leave Bassitt just one run above the maximum for a quality start. Nate Pearson and Bowden Francis threw 51 pitches to finish the final three innings of the game. Chris Bassitt hadn’t started with his best stuff and would be charged with a loss, but had stabilized quickly enough to protect the bullpen and keep the Jays in fighting shape for the streak of games ahead.
Well, “quickly enough” is debatable. The next day, the Blue Jays lost 13-3 as Nate Pearson, pitching on a second consecutive day, distinguished himself by walking three straight batters and then giving up a grand slam.
FINAL LINE: 6.0 IP, 4 runs allowed (4 earned), 7 hits, 2 walks, 7 strikeouts. 113 pitches, 71 strikes. Loss.
Ken Waldichuk facing the Kansas City Royals on May 6, 2023:
One of the most enduring contributions of baseball analytics was to dismiss the relevance of the time-honored “win” and “loss” statistics for pitchers. Baseball is a team game, and pitcher records are denigrated as placing too much emphasis on factors that are outside of the pitcher’s control. Giving up one run is enough to lose, but you can surrender any number of runs in a win as long as your offense scores one more than that. As relief pitchers take on a greater share of innings, the concept has become further distorted, with rules that can frequently award a team’s “win” to the relief pitcher who gave away the lead but were fortunate enough to get bailed out by their offense in the next half inning.
But the appeal makes a lot more sense in a bygone paradigm where a team’s starting pitcher was expected to be your host throughout the day. The man on the mound has such singular responsibility for directing the game’s action that there’s something appropriate about crediting the guy who does most of the work with the team’s win or loss. When two starting pitchers get the game’s decision, it can still feel like an accurate indication of who won and lost a particular battle, even if the two guys weren’t necessarily battling directly with each other.
On May 6, the two worst teams in baseball were poised to face off. The 7-26 Athletics were a comprehensive disaster and the 8-25 Royals were one game ahead of comprehensive disaster. Every MLB team except these two had attained at least 10 wins already. Oakland sent rookie Ken Waldichuk to the mound. Waldichuk had arrived from the Yankees in a trade at the 2022 deadline and almost immediately joined the much weaker rotation of the A’s. He had endured a couple rough starts in 2023, but had more than a few promising turns that suggested he could be a member of a competent MLB team’s rotation someday.
Kansas City countered with Brady Singer. A few seasons ago, Brady Singer occupied the role of Ken Waldichuk, albeit with more hype — he had been drafted in the first round and developed into a strong young starter in 2022 after getting the time to adjust to MLB in 2020 and 2021. But Brady Singer’s 2023 season was in the process of reteaching baseball’s lesson that success isn’t linear. He had gotten blown up in his most recent start at Minnesota, allowing eight runs and getting just eight outs to end his April with an 8.49 ERA. Today, he hoped to use his opportunity to pitch against the Oakland Athletics to make that number go down, a sentiment that was surely echoed by Ken Waldichuk as the Kansas City Royals offered a chance to lower his 7.26 ERA. Even in the worst baseball games that MLB can put together, the stakes are high to somebody.
Singer struck the first blow in his battle with Waldichuk, escaping from the first inning unscathed after hitting Ryan Noda with a pitch. Waldichuk got three first inning strikeouts, but snuck in two consecutive walks followed by a double to fall behind 1-0 after one 30-pitch inning. But Singer toiled his way through eight batters in the top of the second, two of whom got hits, two of whom walked, and one of whom got hit by a pitch (Ryan Noda, for a second time in two innings). Two of them scored to put the A’s ahead, 2-1. Waldichuk counterpunched with a 17-pitch bottom of the second where no runs scored and the lead held. It grew to 3-1 in the third, as Singer gave up a solo home run to JJ Bleday and Waldichuk gutted his way through 22 more pitches without giving up a run.
A 3-1 score after 3 innings doesn’t necessarily imply that the starting pitchers were ushering this game off the rails, but a closer inspection of this coal mine would reveal the suspicious aroma of dead canaries. There were already seven walks and Ryan Noda had been hit by a pitch twice. The teams had left at least one runner on base in every half inning and had left two more often than not. Brady Singer had thrown 74 pitches and Ken Waldichuk had thrown 70.
Canaries began falling in plain sight to start the fourth. Perhaps taking his two HBPs personally, Ryan Noda hit an RBI triple and then scored when Brent Rooker hit an RBI double. Singer ended the half inning and his evening with five earned runs in just four innings, knocking his 8.49 ERA into an unsightly 8.82 ERA that would prove to be his rock bottom of the 2023 season. It took him 96 pitches to get through the misadventure.
Ken Waldichuk entered the bottom of the fourth with a 5-1 lead and quickly made it a ball game again, surrendering a home run, double, and second home run in order to make it a 5-4 game with no outs. Disaster seemed to be looming when Edward Olivares followed up with a walk, but he was caught stealing to kill the momentum and eventually allow Waldichuk to reel in the Royals. He got Maikel Garcia to ground out on his 89th pitch of the game.
There’s one more wrinkle about the pitcher win that makes it less-than-suitable for baseball in 2024 — if your starting pitcher doesn’t complete 5 innings, he can’t get credit for the win. Ken Waldichuk had, by the least impressive of margins, outdueled Brady Singer. But if he didn’t get back out there for the fifth inning, the record books wouldn’t really remember it. Waldichuk started out the fifth inning, naturally, by allowing an 8-pitch walk to Michael Massey. But then the next three batters struck out, letting Waldichuk leave the game in line for his first victory of 2023. Neither bullpen allowed any runs to score across their nine combined innings of work, so the results held. Both teams now sat at 8-26.
The two pitchers each get a pretty nice epilogue; Singer got his ERA down to the mid-5s by the time the season wrapped up and has returned in strong form to start off 2024. Ken Waldichuk is currently working his way back from an elbow injury and should be rejoining an Athletics team that wins more games than he’s used to before long.
FINAL LINE: Ken Waldichuk - 5.0 IP, 4 runs allowed (4 earned), 6 hits, 6 walks, 6 strikeouts. 114 pitches, 69 strikes. Win.
Brady Singer - 4.0 IP, 5 runs allowed (5 earned), 6 hits, 3 walks, 4 strikeouts. 96 pitches, 52 strikes. Loss.
Griffin Canning facing the New York Yankees on July 17, 2023:
If you were a pitcher, the number of times you’d want to be in the “110+ pitches, no quality start” club is probably either zero or one. Zero is the tempting answer, since these are all starts that necessitated substantial effort for little payoff. But it’s also, by far, the most common answer, with very little distinction to it. Being on any list of “things that have happened in Major League Baseball” is an impressive accomplishment, one that shows you were around enough to matter to the sport itself in some minute sense. Some guys might sign up for it just to have the opportunity to throw that many pitches in a big league game.
I’m not sure if they’d want to do it twice, and it’s not clear that Griffin Canning wanted to either, but here he is, with just one start separating him from his appearance in our last post. But the All Star Break also separated Canning from that appearance, and the appearance was limited to 56 pitches because he kept allowing home runs, so he was well-rested to face the New York Yankees. This game started as you might expect from our category leader in pitches thrown; Oswald Peraza walked on eight pitches and Gleyber Torres followed with an 8-pitch single later in the inning. No runs scored and a 4-pitch strikeout provided a highlight, but it took 23 pitches for Canning to escape.
If you’ve read the other seven examples of misdirected marathon pitchers, you probably have a rough feel for what’s going to happen next. Canning is going to dance along the line between survival and defeat for a few innings, taking collateral damage all the while through a swelling pitch count. Eventually, the volatile cocktail will explode into a cloud of acrid fumes and we’ll be left with an unwieldy pitching line that doesn’t adequately reflect the effort that went into producing it. Right?
Not exactly! The sub-sample we’ve chosen obscures the theme of pitcher use in contemporary baseball; generally, when a guy is permitted to throw a lot of pitches, it’s because something is going well. For Canning, that manifested when he recorded his next six outs via strikeout while allowing just three isolated singles. Through three shutout innings, Canning had struck out seven batters and thrown 63 pitches. He hadn’t pitched in a game in over a week due to the All Star Game layoff. Why not see if he could do something special?
A fourth inning groundout by Harrison Bader briefly upset the vibes, but two more strikeouts got things on track to bring the cumulative totals to nine strikeouts and 78 pitches. Oswaldo Cabrera led off the fifth with Canning’s tenth strikeout (a new season high), but then things got suboptimal as the next 15 pitches were spent getting Jose Trevino to lineout and letting Oswald Peraza draw a walk. He ended the inning with a groundout on his 101st pitch to keep the shutout intact.
It’s hard to know for sure why the Angels chose to bring Canning out for the sixth, but you have to assume the statistical possibilities got some consideration. In addition to currently missing out on the quality start, Canning wasn’t even in line for the win – the Angels had failed to score any runs in support. Canning had been great all night, and just one more inning of dominance could change the game’s fortunes. The pitch count of “101” has no empirical connection to the health of the human arm and only frightens us because we use a base-10 numbering system. He could probably throw a few more.
And this is the part where your skepticism finally gets rewarded. Well, not quite – first, Canning struck out Gleyber Torres on four pitches and Anthony Rizzo on seven pitches. His 112 pitches matched the total he threw on June 30, with his 12 strikeouts better than any prior start in his career. His 5.2 innings left him one out away from doing his job as a Quality Starter. But of course, it wasn’t to be; in his final eight pitches, Canning allowed two singles and a walk to load the bases before anyone could blink. He was relieved at 120 pitches, setting a new high for any pitcher in MLB that season (a mark that would only be topped three times) and a new high for any Angels pitcher since 2015, but not pitching for long enough to earn a quality start. Three pitches later, Jimmy Herget allowed a ground-rule double to Oswaldo Cabrera and two runs were charged to Canning’s ledger, putting him in line for the loss. Fortunately, the Angels came back and won in extra innings to render Canning’s electric, career-best performance a mere nonevent.
FINAL LINE: 5.2 IP, 2 runs allowed (2 earned), 6 hits, 3 walks, 12 strikeouts. 120 pitches, 81 strikes. No decision.
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